ATLANTA — On the same day Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) was ousted from Congress, in part over his criticism of Israel amid its war against Hamas, the only practicing Jewish member of Georgia‘s House of Representatives is advising President Joe Biden to remember the Peach State’s Jewish community ahead of November.
Although Bowman’s campaign against Westchester County Executive George Latimer in New York has different dynamics to Biden’s against former President Donald Trump and Georgia’s Jewish community is relatively small, Rep. Esther Panitch, a Democrat, wants to remind the president he only won her state by 12,000 votes in 2020.
In an interview, Panitch, who represents north Fulton County, revealed that if she had 10 minutes with Biden, she would raise “the challenges he’s had in the Jewish community with Democrats,” including his administration’s abstention from a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in March and his decision last month to pause a shipment of heavy bombs to Israel.
“Those don’t fit well with the Jewish community as a whole,” Panitch told the Washington Examiner. “He is saying all the right things about antisemitism. Now, we need to see more action to protect Jewish people in the U.S.”
Panitch reflected on concerns in Georgia’s Jewish community that the Democratic Party’s coalition of voters, referred to as its “big tent,” may not be “big enough to hold liberal, pro-Israel Jews, which are most Jews, and those advocating for the destruction of the state of Israel.” Not all critics of the Israel-Hamas war are, in Panitch’s words, “advocating for the destruction of the state of Israel.”
“We’ll see if the tent is big enough. There are days I have my doubts,” the lawmaker said.
Panitch described division among Georgia’s Jewish community, in which some Democrats are considering not only withholding their vote for Biden, but potentially casting a ballot for Trump.
“It’s just not an option for most Jewish Democrats, but there are people peeling off,” she said. “I think he needs to assure the Jewish community that he is doing everything he can, including asking for more prosecutions for people who attack synagogues. … I have seen people who are conflicted who were never conflicted before.”
Panitch’s comments come after Biden criticized pro-Palestinian and pro-Gaza protests and demonstrations, prompted by an Israel real estate event, that devolved into violence outside a Los Angeles synagogue last weekend as “antisemitic.” Biden also underscores his National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, the country’s first.
“I’m appalled by the scenes outside of Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles,” Biden wrote on social media. “Intimidating Jewish congregants is dangerous, unconscionable, antisemitic, and un-American. Americans have a right to peaceful protest. But blocking access to a house of worship — and engaging in violence — is never acceptable.”
But Biden’s attempts to appeal to the Jewish community and critics of the war have been scrutinized by Republicans, including Georgia state Sen. Greg Dolezal.
“If you’re a Jewish Democrat in America today, not just in Georgia, but America, and you’ve seen the antisemitism that has come out of the far-Left, I think that you’re asking yourself a serious question as to why am I loyal to this party?” Dolezal, who also represents Fulton County, told the Washington Examiner. “I do think you’ll see some shifts there.”
For Georgia State University political science professor Jeffrey Lazarus, who himself is Jewish, the state’s community can be overlooked because “there just aren’t a ton of us.”
“I think the Jewish population is around 125,000 out of 11 million who live here,” Lazarus told the Washington Examiner. “That being said, the Jewish vote breaks about 75-80% Democratic, so if Jews stay home, that’s a bigger problem for Dems than Reps.”
“In a razor-tight election, almost anything can be the difference between winning and losing,” he said. “Beyond vote totals, Jewish voters do a lot of organizing and volunteer work for Democratic candidates, especially where I live in the North Atlanta suburbs. If enough of them sit the election out, it could weaken the party’s ‘ground game’ in an important part of the state.”
Emory University political science associate professor Zachary Peskowitz agreed Georgia’s Jewish community is a “core constituency” of any Democrat contesting statewide office.
“Protests in Georgia and much of the south, they tend to be smaller than you would see in maybe the Northeast and California,” Peskowitz told the Washington Examiner. “There have been some high-profile incidents. There was a protest at Emory that resulted in 20-something arrests and got a lot of media attention. It’s not an issue that’s not happening here, but not to the same extent that you’ve seen in New York or Los Angeles.”
“There are some voters who probably won’t cast a ballot in the presidential election because they have concerns about both candidates,” he said. “There probably are some Jewish members of the Jewish community who might be willing to cast a vote for Trump, and that might be the first time they vote for a Republican president. It might come down to Israel, as well as Iran policy.”
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University of Georgia political professor Charles Bullock added that if Biden is trying to replicate “the package” of voters he brought together in 2020, any “erosions,” whether among the Jewish community or its black or Latino counterparts, “could be problematic.”
“You put them all together, and it could be all over,” Bullock told the Washington Examiner. “Some could vote for him. Others may sit it out.”